Siblings
by NotQuiteThere
Summary: Thoughts about twins and what they mean
1. My Brother

Disclamier: Dark Angel and all it's characters belong to James Cameron but don't deserve to belong to Fox who in their infinite blindness canceled the show. Long live fan fiction.

Alec reflects on Ben and who he was to him.

All of my life I felt that I had this odd connection, like something was missing in my life. I would feel pain where I wasn't hurt or would suddenly be angry or happy for no reason at all. I never knew why this was until a year ago. Manticore knew of course. 

I remember as a child, I must have been only five at the time, being placed in a room with glass windows covering one side of the room. Two guards came in and they covered me in sensors to record my nerve impulses. Suddenly I felt a flash or pain in my right arm. The doctors in the room read the print out and made those vague murmuring noises before one of them nodded to the guards and looked away. I knew that I was going to be hurt then, when we were little the doctors always looked away while we were hurt, what they don't see didn't happen even if they ordered it done. One of the guards took my left arm and snapped it. After that I was taken to the med. ward and patched up again. There was another child behind the curtains on the adjacent bed., I didn't see who. Looking back I realize that it must have been 493, Ben, the doctors were testing us, seeing if we could feel the other's pain if we didn't know each other existed. 

I always had the feelings even after he and the others escaped I would feel what he felt and most of the time those rare flashes of feeling were happy. Wherever Ben was when he escaped he was happy a lot of the time. But two years ago those feelings were changed I felt pain and confusion, not happiness coming though and I wondered. Then suddenly during a training exercise I felt a burst of pain, searing and my heart stopped for a second. I didn't scream, I just gasped and saw the woods surrounding me swirl about my head. Before I passed out I felt like something had suddenly be cut from me, like I had lost that little thing inside of me that gave me those strange burst of feeling. When I woke up I was in the pych. lab and a group of doctors were conferring over me. That was the start of my six month stay with pych. and the knowledge of the fact that I had a twin brother. A twin brother whose existence I never knew of until after his death. I learnt of what he had done, the tattoos, the murders. 

I told Max that the real world must have finally gotten to him to make him snap like that. She told me that it was Manticore. She was wrong it wasn't Manticore, not really, it was me. 493, Ben, was never able to escape Manticore like the rest of them because I was still in it, I was still feeding him my feeling of what they were doing to me. For all of those feeling of joy that he must have sent me I must have sent him twenty times more the feeling of pain and desperation. I never knew that I was doing it, they never told me. Manticore's need to know basis and I never seemed to need to know. 

I wish that I had known him, I wish that somehow I could tell him that I'm sorry, that I would have tried to shut off those feelings that I sent him. I wish I could thank him for all of those thoughts that he sent me, the thoughts that stopped Manticore from breaking me. Ben saved my life, he may not have known it but he was the one that kept me human. I still don't really understand why it is that he killed all of those people, what his motive was. If he even had one, but I think I know what set him off. I never told Max but I researched the murders that Ben committed and the dates that they happened. The first murder was exactly one month after I saw Rachel die. I miss my brother. 


	2. My Sister

Disclamier: Dark Angel and all it's characters belong to James Cameron but don't deserve to belong to Fox who in their infinite blindness canceled the show. Long live fan fiction.

It was a shock to see her. Speeding out of Seattle and seeing a bike pull up next to me the same type of bike, jacket and face. She hardly need to push me off the road the shock would have done that alone. I knew that Manticore had created another like me, after all she had shot me in the forest and I had seen her dying in Manticore form some disease that even the lab techs couldn't stop. I had no idea though that there was another me out there the same age. I had no idea when I escaped that I was leaving my clone behind. 

When she told me what they had done to her after I escaped I couldn't speak. I knew that Manticore had been cruel and I knew what they would do. Alec had never told me much about the six months in phy-ops after they had found out the Ben had started to kill people. What I could gather though from the things that he let slip it had been a horrendous experience. I never wanted a sister of mine to go through that even if she didn't see me as such. Sitting there knowing that White would be coming soon I was still worried almost as much for her as I was for me. She was married and in love, she had had the perfect life until White tracked her down looking for me. She had a son and a life away from Manticore, a life that had been great until I ruined it again. I wanted to ask her how she had managed it. How she had managed to find that life that we were all looking for. I wanted to know if she could rebuild an engine but was unable to cook a meal. If she had had a brother like Zach. I wanted to tell her that White was going to betray her, that there was no way he would allow a transgenic loose, especially one that was my clone. 

When Logan let me free and we fought, it was so strange fighting myself and I wondered how much was I fighting her and how much was I fighting what was happening inside of me. She had been right; I was always running. I had told myself that this way the others would be safe by leaving them they would no longer be in danger. But she was right I was running to protect myself not them. I was so scared of what might happen if I said that I couldn't cope and so I ran. I had left behind my family, Logan, Original Cindy, Joshua, Alec, Sketchy and even Normal. Somehow they had become the people that I was trying to protect they were the people that I leaned on. The way that Logan loved me no matter what, how O.C. always said exactly what I needed to hear and supported me through it all; Alec and his constant wise cracks and understanding of what it was like to be form Manticore, Joshua who could always make me smile and see the positive, Sketchy's constant get rich quick schemes and gullibility and even Normal, constantly riding me about being late for work. They were my family and Sam was right I was deserting them, the way I had deserted her when I escaped. I didn't know that she even existed then, but I had known that there were others and I hadn't tried break them out as well for another ten years.

On the drive back to Terminal City I told her what we were going to do; how the exchange would take place. There was a quiet fury that she directed towards me rather than White. Her fear for her family was so strong. All she wanted was to have her life back. She had never told her husband about who she was and now she would have to. She would have to explain that he was originally a means to an end that she was to use him to gain access to restricted information. She would have to admit that she was engineered in a lab and created as a weapon. I couldn't imagine the difficulty that she would have. She had a son, not by birth but by love and she would have to explain to him that the reason he had never met her parents was that she didn't have any. 

When I saw the exchange, who her husband and son looked like I couldn't help but marvel. Her husband was so similar to Logan, he had the same shaggy hair and build. Her son was scared by what had happened to him, but trustingly allowed a one of the transgenics to move him out of the line of fire. Even after we had managed the exchange and got her family back safely she still blamed me for what had happened to her and perhaps rightly. I watched her hold her son and her husband question what was happening. I like to think that I helped her in some way when I destroyed Manticore, Like Alec said if I hadn't brought it down she would have had to returned and lost her family. Before she left she seemed to forgive if not forgotten. She might not ever see me as a sister, as I see her, but at least she no longer saw me as the enemy. 


End file.
